Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Overserved
New Year’s Eve 2021
Oh, TV guy, we
most clearly observed
That in your
speech you swiveled and swerved
But in the
dawn’s clear light you’re now unnerved
An apology,
yes, that’s well deserved
But please
don’t tell us you were overserved
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
On my 74th Birthday
The
eternal magic of eternal things
sends the dreamer out into the world
-Rod McKuen, “January 2”
I didn’t mean
to be 74
That wasn’t
part of my master plan
To be young
forever, cooler each year
But suddenly
I’ve become invisible
Once upon a
time and long ago
I drove my old
MG to California
A sleeping
bag, a few books, a few poems
A portable
typewriter, some portable dreams
I remember
breaking down in Tucson
But best of
all, I remember the dreams
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Statues and Time
Capsules
“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand
in the desert. . .
-Shelley, “Ozymandias”
The past few years have witnessed a purge of statues,
which while ahistorical in an immediate sense is historical in another: as
cultures rise they raise statues to themselves, and as they decline the statues
are destroyed or recycled by a new rising culture. In their turn, those statues too are
eventually destroyed by yet another rising power.
But it’s all neatly told in Shelley’s clear and
cautionary “Ozymandias.”
A statue almost never tells us much about history as it
was lived, but rather as the mythology held by whoever had the power to tax
people to set it up.
Movies are much the same. Gettysburg is a fine
movie with great staging (except for the fake beards) and a great musical
score, but, gosh, all those fat Confederates don’t match the reality of a time
when no one had enough to eat.
The soundtrack to Sam Peckinpah’s chaotic Major Dundee
sounds like a bunch of drugged-out hippies turned loose with tin pans and car
parts, communicating nothing about the Civil War in the American Southwest; the
racket reveals only that the film was made in the 1960s.
An irony about all the Confederate statues coming down is
that they were bought mostly from northern businessmen. Those of well-known
figures, such as Lee and Jackson, were specialty items, but the famous “standing
soldier” who, well, stands on the courthouse squares of many southern towns
also stands on the courthouse squares of many northern towns. They were
mass-produced, and a USA belt buckle or a CSA belt buckle and a hat change made
a grey stone or zinc statue either an American soldier or a Confederate
soldier, whichever way a town council wanted it.
Confederate, Union Soldier Statues Look the Same. Here's Why
| Time
Why those Confederate soldier statues look a lot like their
Union counterparts - The Washington Post
I suppose now they’d come from Shanghai.
Indeed, the likeness of Martin Luther King on the
national mall was made in China. There was some controversy about that because
apparently no American artists, quarries, or stonemasons were permitted to bid
on it.
MLK Memorial: From China, with love? - CSMonitor.com
I don’t know if there is a time capsule somewhere within
it.
If someone were to raise a statue to you some day, what
items would you like to see included in its time capsule?
These things needn’t be especially durable because in a century
or two someone’s going to knock your statue down too.
…boundless and
bare
The
lone and level sands stretch far away.”
-“Ozymandias”
-30-
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
A Time Capsule for our Noblest Soldier
“In war I do
not like to take sides”
-Sergeant
Schultz
If there must be
time capsules buried beneath
Statues of bold
men wearing uniforms
As a remembrance
of man’s noblest ideals
Let us have one
for dear ol’ Sergeant Schultz
A recipe for Hans' apple strudel
A bottle of his
favorite Pilsner beer
A Cuban cigar
from Colonel Klink’s stash
And a menu from
the Hofbrau House
But especially
the strudel
If we must honor
soldiers, as some assert
Then let us include their favorite dessert
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
We’ll Write a New Idyll This Year
The
old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And
God fulfils himself in many ways
-Idylls of the King, “The Passing of Arthur,”
8-9
Janus faces both ways, and so do we
A last, lingering look at the year that was
And then a turn to the year we must meet
Marching to it through Janus Pater’s doors
We will most remember about the past
Our friends whose pilgrimages came to their ends
We joy in the remembrance of their happiness
Their stories and songs, their unfailing kindness
Janus faces both ways, and so do we;
But now our friends, our happy friends, they see
Light
And
the new sun rose bringing the new year
-Idylls,
“The Passing of Arthur,” 469
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
6 January 2021: To
Ask to be Exempt Would be Unreasonable
“Death . . . comes for us all, my lords. Yes, even for
Kings he comes…”
-St. Thomas More in Robert Bolt’s A Man for All
Seasons
A slip of paper which I have since misplaced:
“SARS coronavirus 2 RNS
Detected”
Detected
DETECTED
Me? But I’m special (my mother always said so)
“If you have a question regarding your…”
Well, no, I guess not. Time to pause and think
To ask to be exempt would be unreasonable
But will my corpse be stored in a reefer truck?
To ask to be exempt would be unreasonable
And so
What must I do in service to God and man?
I wrote these clumsy lines
in January after my daughter recovered from the CV; she almost died of it. My
pharmacist was diagnosed at about the same time as I was, 6 January, and died
within two weeks. My wife was quite ill for a week but recovered. Some fifteen
friends and acquaintances died from it this year. One friend died in a
three-hospital shuffle, and because of the paperwork his body was not released
to his family for months.
Vaccines, as you will
remember, were available to Congress in December of 2020 but not to most
citizens until March of 2021 (AOC gets coronavirus vaccine on social media, as Congress
begins to receive Pfizer injections | Fox News), and (The Distribution Timeline for the COVID-19 Vaccine |
coronavirus (utah.gov)).
My symptoms were only something
like a prolonged bad cold, an undeserved mercy.
The CV is real.
May our new year be free from
it.
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
A Child’s Garden
of Worse(s)
Some
poets wrote verses which were not meant to charm the reader
but
to get them a Stalin prize.
Yevtushenko, A Precocious Autobiography, 1963
The children who are permitted to live
Are not permitted to read what they want
When they ask for adventures our censors give
Ideology, instead of a jaunt
The children who are not submissive to the code
Not following this week’s fashions in science
Or who presume to kick against the goad
Will be inclusively loved into compliance
And from the Hippocrene a taste, a drink?
Oh, no! Children are now forbidden to dream or think
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
The Stupidest
Metaphor
Do these camouflage knee-pantsies make my 250-pound
ass look too big?
He never formed up with a skirmish line
To poop and snoop to some distant trees
Across a death-hot field of weeds and mud
With some idiot yelling, “Dress it up!”
He never feared that a 40-mike-mike
Would blow his guts and spine into bloody rags
Which would get his air-conditioned C/O
In Saigon another medal and promotion
His PTSD is from watching TV
But he is pleased to claim that he is a warrior
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
A High-Tuned White
Boy and his Come-to-Jesus Moment
Only yesterday he was in control
Of his high-tuned, high-speed, white-boy screaming ride
Race-tracking our pot-holed, beer-canned country road
Without regard for sanity, safety, or sense
Today he sits and sulks in the passenger seat
Of the little wifey’s Toyota sedan
Shadowed by his grim-faced mother-in-law
Like maybe they’re off to see the judge
In this procession he seems all alone -
His hot sports car is apparently gone
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
If Good King
Wenceslaus Looked Down Today
If good King Wenceslaus looked down today
On this Feast of Stephen, he’d see a poor man
Gathering winter air-conditioning
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Late in the
Evening on Christmas Eve
After breakfast with a friend
After setting up for a family luncheon
After a family luncheon that never seemed to end
After cleaning up after a family luncheon
(and that,
too, never seemed to end)
After a moment of sitting and thinking with wife and
child
After opening gifts (with dachshunds and cats)
After sharing gifts (with dachshunds and cats)
After keeping dachshunds and cats from eating the tree
ornaments
After watching Judy Garland sing “Have Yourself a Merry
Little Christmas”
After sitting exhausted with a therapeutic episode of The
Office
You realize
The day wasn’t so bad
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
His Name is John
We plan our lives, we think our thoughts
We name the days, we name the child
We count the oughts, dismiss the naughts
We seek for peace, we fear the wild
We dare presume to sort our days
As if we were Creators too
To look upon our works and praise
That which we think is right and true
But Zechariah, his old face wan
Corrects us with:
“His name is John”
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Practicing Mindful
Breathing
We breathe mindfully but with our lungs
This necessity of life has become a trend
Which we study in meditative books
As if our alveoli were rosary beads
Even our watches want to instruct us
In the deep mysteries of inhalations
And like masters of postulants and novices
Ring us awake for our morning breaths
“Focus on your breathing” – how very odd
If we should respirate to the glory of God
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Word Sung as Light
Upon hearing a recording of the Orthodox Christian
Monks
of the Svetogorskaya Monastery
A deep, slow stream of tones, of modes, of chants
Where time and all eternity flow as one
Through voices and dreamlike echoings
Among the Altars of the earth and sky
The song begins upon the Bosporus
Ascends up to and beyond the spheres of Heaven
Then gently rains upon the souls of men
Forever and ever, in this world and the next
The Word first sung as Light, sung as Creation
And sung again as the Incarnation
Orthodox Christian Monks chant
Christmas Carols - YouTube
(I’m not sure “carols” is
correct; in their awe and reverence these works appear to be hymns.)
A marvel for children and old men.
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Everyone Writes a Poem about the Winter
Solstice
The moon is falling away from the full
The axis of the earth will briefly pause
Planets and stars align as the Maker wills
And we wonder if we can sense our world
Our world as she shivers across the night
We must light a hilltop fire for her
So that she will spin the light back to us
While we search the heavens for that star
That star that led us to a stable long ago
And now bathes our souls with its silver glow
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Decorating for Christmas – “What Can I Do?”
A little girl
tugged at my arm and asked
“But what can I
do?”
I sent her to
Senora Anil because I didn’t know
She came to me
again and sadly asked
“But what can I
do?”
I sent her to Miz
Bev because I didn’t know
She came to me
once again and sadly asked
“But what can I
do?”
I sent her to
Senor Nicho because I didn’t know
Some sturdy young
men brought in the Creche
And there the
little girl knelt and placed the straw
And then each
figure in turn; she talked to them
And cautioned
them all to keep Baby Jesus warm
And that’s
what a little girl can do
Poetricdrivel.blogspot.com
Toy Trains, Grandmother’s Good China, and Children
As Inspector Barnaby
says in one of the Midsomer Mysteries, we can’t recover the past; that’s
why it’s the past.
Childhood
Christmases are often the metaphorical benchmark for our present Christmases,
and that won’t do. The magic of opening a package under the tree on Christmas
morning is for little children; it won’t work for us and it’s not meant to. And
that’s okay. Besides, at some point in all the visiting we’re going to be
privileged to watch children open their presents, and we’ll get to share a
little of their magic, like a puff of pixie dust.
In the run-up to
Christmas there was for over a century a little commercial magic in the Sears & Roebuck catalogue,
but that disappeared long ago and after this Christmas the few remaining Sears
stores are going away too. Where, then, can little boys go to see the magic of toy
trains running on multiple levels through a cotton-wool winter landscape? Where
did they go, the tiny little people forever waiting at a rural railway station
and the others walking, sawing wood, sitting by a window? Where are all the
little houses and stores and barns lit by miniature grain-of-wheat light bulbs?
Young adults don’t
remember walking and shopping along streets lined with shops, and their
children won’t remember shopping malls.
Ordering by
electrical mail is certainly efficient, but you can’t fit Santa Claus or a
junior high choir into a UPS truck.
Artificial Christmas
trees – bah, humbug!
One good thing about
a modern Christmas is that no one seems to stage Charles Dickens’ tedious A
Christmas Carol much anymore. When I was a child I always hoped someone
would kick Tiny Tim’s little crutch out from under him. And maybe someone did.
I wonder when
someone first said, “Christmas has become too commercialized!” Probably about
34 or 35 A.D.
How remarkable that
the appearance on the dinner table of Meemaw’s “good” china, probably from
Sears or Montgomery Ward, brought out only twice a year, can bring back all sorts
of those childhood memories I just now cautioned you against.
On Sunday morning
after Mass the teenagers assembled the Stable, and then some little children knelt
before it to arrange the hay just so, and then place almost every figure – the Infant
Jesus is brought on Christmas Eve – just so: Mary, Joseph, the crib, camels,
oxen, shepherds, wise men first in this place and then in that, talking to each
one of them about how when Christmas comes they must keep the Baby Jesus warm.
Magic.
Merry Christmas,
everyone.
-30-
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Another Christmas Behind the Wire
The hallways of our dormitory echo
God’s holy silence on this Christmas Eve
The only light’s the Star of long ago;
It shines this night for us, whose hearts believe
For we are all now at the Manger met
Before the Altar of eternal Light
Such different personalities, and yet
We share our common faith on this rarest night
We bring our gifts to Mary’s fair-born Child:
A pen, a broom, a book, a welding rod,
A wrench, a mop, some papers neatly filed –
Our daily labors offered up to God
But silence now: offices, hallways, gym -
As silent as the streets of Bethlehem
(In the unit I visit the gym is but a slab of concrete outside; I needed the rhyme.)
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
A December
Sunflower but No Cigar
While walking in the garden, thinking about things
And wishing I had a cigar, I saw a sunflower
A volunteer, a brave young volunteer
From late summer’s glorious display
Most everything around it was brown and down
Except for a few tiny timid weeds
Some withering blades of tenacious grass
And a few scruffy zinnias along the fence
In January’s frosts it will disappear
But for now, the little sunflower - and we - are here
